Interview: Quinn Kelsey

As Rigoletto in Oslo

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ARTIST: Quinn Kelsey

VOICE: Verdi Baritone (lyric)

BORN: 1978 in Hawaii

CURRENTLY IN: “Rigoletto”, Oslo

SPECIAL QUALITIES: A singer with a beautiful voice that can fill a house with sound that pours naturally from his body without any sign of force.

SOUNDCLIPS: www.quinnkelsey.com (personal favourite: Di Provenza)

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Quinn Kelsey; a tower and a half of a man (looks well over 6’5″!) who’s noticeably soft-spoken, sweet-natured, articulate and humble, agreed to meet with yours truly at a bar in Oslo one Thursday afternoon to talk about… opera. To kick it all off: His first “Rigoletto”. Well, the principle role, that is. At the age of 33, he’s obviously already done Montereone in the same opera at the MET in New York. Indeed. I think it’s fair to say that this is a man who’s heading for uncertain heights, especially as he has one of the most beautifully sounding baritone voices I’ve heard live yet.

Rigoletto in Oslo

In 2008 he was in New York making his debut at the MET (read: Metropolitan Opera) as Schaunard in “La Bohéme”, when his agent called and said he said he had an audition coming up for Den Norske Opera. He made sure he had an accompanist, make sure they knew all his music and made sure they had all his music – then he went for the audition in front of the three heads of the company.

I’d just worked with Paul Curran in Chicago the previous year, so when I walked into the audition he already knew me and it was nice to have that connection, which made the audition a whole lot better. “Cortigiani”, the aria from the second act in “Rigoletto” was one of the pieces that I offered, they enjoyed it and a few months later they contacted my manager and wanted to discuss possibilities for doing “Rigoletto” in Oslo in 2011.

It’s definitely one of these roles for a baritone for which a singer has to know when it’s time, because if you sing a role like this too early it can really kill one’s longevity. There are certain roles that I have to wait for, for that reason, and the timing was about right. It feels like it’s time to do it, and I feel like it has been good over the past nine performances.

What do you think of this production?

I like it! A production like this is what they call a period production, in other words it fits the time period for which the story happens. I like that my first “Rigoletto” is a period piece, that it’s not some kinda crazy out of context production, which wouldn’t be a problem but it’s nice to do the first one with these costumes and all the women have the ball gowns. It feels right to do the first one this way, it’s a fun production, we had a long time to work on stage and I’m really quite happy with it. It’s a good start for me in this role.

Norway isn’t exactly known for its mild winters, and for a guy who’s grown up in Hawaii, it must have been quite a shock, surely?

I live in Chicago and it can get quite cold in the winter. The beginning of this year I was in NY and it was quite cold. Both had some crazy blizzard spells at Christmas and over New Year, and it was particularly cold in NY. The funny thing is that I had a wool coat already and bought a heavy-duty parka in preparation for what the weather would be like here, and I have to say that I got off the express train from the airport and started to overheat! I was very happy with the cold, strangely enough it was much more manageable here, as it’s not as invasive. I really enjoyed it actually! There were times when I would take my computer to the balcony, put on my parka, have my pear cider in the snow and sit there for about an hour. I grew up in Hawaii so cold is still very much a novelty to me. I love the idea of sitting out on my balcony and it starts to snow. It’s kinda fun!

As Quinn Kelsey is still a man in his early 30s, it’s a far stretch to have to imagine being a middle-aged man with a rampant teenage daughter who gets involved with the local Don Juan and has her heart-broken. How does he get into the mindset of “Rigoletto”?

It’s not easy. You have to sit down and figure out how you’d feel if you had a child who was wronged in such a serious way. I don’t have any children so I don’t know what it feels like, but I’m trying as hard as possible to feel it as closely as I can. I think of friends’ children, cousins’ babies, but that’s about as far as I can get. In that sense it’s so much harder.

If nothing else, my soprano Eli Kristin [Hanssveen] has really made it so much easier for me to feel that way, because she’s a very passionate human being, we’ve got along quite well and I’ve grown an affection for her that then makes it so much easier for me to access those feelings that I need. When she bursts back on stage with just a shirt on and has that look on her face; she’s scared, startled, nervous, embarrassed and maybe angry too, it then makes it so much easier for me to play off of, because I see all that in her body and in her face. In some small way my heart just drops. She’s helped in many ways she’s probably not even aware of, but that’s the kind of artist she is. I want to protect and take care of her, and then it just works. I think we managed to accomplish the emotions we need to portray.

Quinn on… how fortunate he is to be where he is at such a young age.

Musical background

Borrowed from www.quinnkelsey.com

Quinn comes from a family where everybody sings; his mother was singing in church so he got most of his classical (and sacred) background from her, whereas his father was the lead singer in a highschool band – which got him interested in everything else from rock to pop to folk and everything in between. 

From both of them I’ve absorbed a general appreciation for music. Music was something we did all the time so when opera came along, it didn’t seem that much different. It wasn’t a stretch at all, although we didn’t understand the words it was still notes and music. It wasn’t second nature, but it was very close. We had to learn the different languages, but not having to deal with the music on top of it made it all the easier.

It wasn’t always obvious that he was a baritone, though…

When the voice is young, most times it’s very high. Through puberty the voice will normally drop, so I was a boy soprano until the age of 10 or 11. After that my voice was still quite high, so I was a tenor for the next few years. The only difference for me was that because I’d used my voice so much, the drop wasn’t that intense or drastic. The only thing was that suddenly singing up that high wasn’t as easy anymore, and I asked the director if I could sing lower because that fit better – and my voice dropped far. All the way down to second bass, but by the end of High School it had climbed back up again, making me a bass-baritone. I wasn’t a lyric baritone until about my 3rd or 4th year in college, that’s when it started to settle.

Maybe from 2003-2005 I really solidified myself as a lyric baritone, going in the direction of Verdi baritone singing. The advantage was that I’d been singing as early as I could remember, so it was easier for me to define each of the periods where my voice was changing. So now I consider myself a Verdi baritone, but that I probably have more of an extension on top than most of my counterparts. I can access up to an A-natural, B-flat range. It’s nice to have that little bit extra, some say I’ll be a tenor but I don’t think so because the voice pretty much lies in the baritone range.

Some might think that having a voice like Quinn’s, you must go to a big, fancy school… but no. He didn’t want to leave home yet, so he stayed and went to a normal college in a comfortable environment.

It’s not that I didn’t want to be an opera singer, but I didn’t have the drive that my other peers did. I knew it was something I could do and would work for me but I didn’t have to have it. The year after I started college, I was hired as a soloist at a local church. This suddenly gave me a whole lot of repertoire, and gave the opera company in Hawaii a chance to see what I could do. College worked out well, I didn’t get to go to a big music school but I think I accessed a lot of good education that really helped me to stand up to many of my other peers that did go to the big schools.

Quinn on… his first principle role, as Marcello in “La Bohéme”.

Quinn on… his experience with the Metropolitan Opera.

Who do you look up to?

I don’t have anyone specific. I take a lot of things from a lot of singers, and they’re not all baritones. There were ways that certain female singers sang in long lines with lots of breath, that I really agree with, so I try to do that. There are certain kinds of characterisation that other males have that I like to use too. I like things that Corelli, Pavarotti did and Bastianini did, I’ve had the privilege to work with Sherrill Milnes and I hear in my head all the things he did in his prime. I notice things, like the breath-control Hvorostovsky has, characterisations other baritones I’ve befriended have done, little bits and pieces that singers do that’s not written in the music, things that’s popped out when you’re that engrossed in the character that makes sense. I listen to lot of different singers, and take things I like and I believe it’s helped me to define my own sound. I just take the best from everything I like and put it into one, or at least try, and add my own flavour to it.

Borrowed from www.quinnkelsey.com

Any Wagner in the future, perhaps?

I’d like to! He didn’t write a whole lot for my voice, except roles like Wolfram in “Tannhäuser”, Kurwenal in “Tristan und Isolde” and Amfortas in “Parsifal”. I covered Donner in “Das Rheingold” twice and I really enjoyed it. There’s this quality to Wagner that you just don’t get in other composers. Something that I don’t feel is necessarily lacking in the other composers, but that Wagner just found and put into his writing that I just love. It’s all about the energy that he wrote into certain characters. I just wish there was more for my voice.

Wolfram and Kurwenal I could do now. Amfortas and the Dutchman (in “Der fliegende Holländer”) I need to wait for. If not for the longevity factor, then the idea that if you have a lot of success in certain roles there’s the possibility that people are going to want to hire you for them all the time. The result of that is that they might not hire me for the kind of things I want to sing. For instance, if you do a really good Scarpia (in “Tosca”), then they’ll want to hire you for Scarpia all the time. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but there’s a possibility of that. I would need to wait for those other roles so that I get to sing all those roles that I should be singing. It’s a sensitive situation.

So in future I would like to sing Wagner, definitely do Scarpia and a lot of Rigoletto.

With a rare voice like yours you’re almost obliged to do Verdi, though.

That’s fine with me! Next year, apart from a Fauré “Requiem” in the spring, it’s all Verdi next year: “Il Trovatore”, “Aida”, “Atilla”, “Simon Boccenegra” and “Rigoletto” at the end of the year.

Bringing more people to the opera

I think it’s necessary! There’s a lot to be learnt from opera. I just think people need to always be aware of how they go about presenting it. A lot of trends nowadays lean against popular music styles and things. I think an appreciation for opera is very valuable. To get an understanding for what came before, the kind of music and art that was really prominent back in those days. It’s valuable for today’s generation, to know where you’ve come from. If nothing else, the one way I like to think about it is that you can have classical training, and if you get the training to sing opera you can sing rock, pop, access all these other genres of music that are more popular now. You see all these singers who don’t have a voice anymore, but you look at opera singers and they’re singing into their 60s and 70s. I think it’s important for the younger generation to be educated about it. It’s what I do, so it’s an art form for which I carry a great deal of pride.

Quinn on… bringing opera to the people (cont’d).

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